Botswana applauds Malawi for linking Vision 2063 to political parties’ manifestos

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Munthali

Botswana through its newly established National Planning Commission (NPC), has applauded Malawi for passing a law ensuring that party manifestos talk to the country’s existing Vision to ensure continuity of development policies and programmes across political regimes.

The leadership of the Botswana National Planning Commission (NPC) said this week when they had a virtual interface meeting with Malawi’s National Planning Commission to learn more about the Malawi NPC and how it has managed to establish itself as a significant player in the national planning and development space of the country and the southern African region within a few years of its establishment.

Botswana has just established its National Planning Commission whose main mandate is “to provide leadership in national strategy development, coordinated sectoral and national planning, implementation coordination and performance monitoring and evaluation”.

Malawi’s NPC was identified to learn from being a young but progressive planning commission in the region which has achieved key and admirable milestones mainly through the formulation of various development planning strategies for the country and its continued leadership that saw revival of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) National Planning Entities (NPEs) Platform.

Through Malawi’s leadership, the NPEs Platform has acted as an important and active community of practice for peer-to-peer learning on how to deal with regional and global economic challenges brought by exogenous shocks, poor economic management, corruption, weakening institutions and global conflicts.

“I want to congratulate Malawi for its clear and successful trajectory in establishing an effective NPC in the region. We are seeking to learn from established and effective commissions on the processes and deliverables and Malawi NPC was identified as such,” said Ms. Goaba Mosienyane, who represented the Interim coordinator of the Botswana NPC at the meeting.

In his presentation during the meeting, the Director General of the Malawi NPC, Dr. Thomas Munthali, emphasized that the Malawi NPC is an independent and apolitical public body whose commissioners are all technocrats from various fields such as the private sector, the NGO sector and the academia.

He said apart from coordinating the development of various national development plans, the Malawi NPC has also promoted robust implementation oversight approaches such as ensuring coordination and prioritization of interventions from both state and non-state actors through the Pillar and Enabler Coordination Groups.

Malawi NPC has also taken direct initiatives in promoting positivity through an initiative called ‘Ndizotheka Programme’ in addition to recognizing champions of the national vision and ensuring that positive value systems start from the young age with progressive school curricula which include ethics, patriotism and integrity among others.

According to the Economic Commission for Africa, Malawi has become a shining example on the continent in domesticating international development agendas such as Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union Agenda 2063 in its vision and medium-term development plans and taking these through to sectoral and district development plans.

While admitting that the Malawi NPC has achieved a lot within a short time, Malawi NPC’s director general was quick to point out that there is also more to learn from Botswana especially with regard to how they have sustained a vibrant economy and called for strong collaboration between the two entities.

“We need strong collaboration between Malawi and Botswana to build an ongoing dialogue on common aspirations of inclusive wealth creation, self-belief and self-reliance. Brothers love each other more when they are equally rich” said Dr. Munthali.

 

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